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THE FLAME ALPHABET
By: Ben Marcus
Knopf
January 2012
On Sale: January 17, 2012
304 pages
ISBN: 030737937X
EAN: 9780307379375
Kindle: B004YWKKFU
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families. A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of childrenβs speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parentsβ sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isnβt so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition. The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcusβs position in the first rank of American novelists.
 Media BuzzStudio 360 - September 13, 2014
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All Things Considered - May 29, 2012
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